Rotational Spectroscopy and Observational Astronomy of Prebiotic Molecules Thesis by Susanna Leigh Widicus Weaver In Partial Ful¯llment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California 2005 (Defended May 2, 2005) ii °c 2005 Susanna Leigh Widicus Weaver All Rights Reserved iii Acknowledgements I owe my gratitude to so many people for their guidance, assistance, friendship, and moral support during the completion of my graduate work. My time at Caltech has been an incredible experience, and I will always remember the wonderful people that I have met in the last few years. Thank you to Geo® Blake, my advisor, for showing all of us with his daily example that a person can indeed still have fun while being a scientist. Yet for all of the fun, you have also taught me how to look at all sides of an issue and how to ¯nd answers for myself, even when there might not be an answer to ¯nd. As a ¯rst-year student in your class I would have never guessed just how well I would know those numbers that I am supposed to keep in the back of my head! Also, thank you for teaching me when to be cautious and when to cut my losses, and especially how to make this choice e®ectively at 3 A.M. at an altitude of 14,000 feet. Thank you for opening the doors to the ¯eld of astrochemistry{I knew when I came to Caltech that I wanted to combine the ¯elds of chemistry and astronomy, and with your help I have now carved out my own niche in this exciting, emerging ¯eld. Most notably, though, thank you for understanding that there are things that are equally, if not more, important than research, and always encouraging me to lead a balanced life. I would like to thank my committee members Jack Beauchamp, Pat Collier, and Doug Rees for keeping me on my toes as well as understanding the struggles I faced as I attempted iv to master two ¯elds. Thank you to the past and current members of the Blake group. To those who have accompanied me on this incredible journey of the Yellow Submarine{Suzanne Bisschop, Garrett Bittner, Rogier Braakman, Dan Holland, Vadym Kapinus, Matt Kelley, Brian Meehan, and Mike Morton{I am so glad to have had you all as o±ce and lab mates, and I want to thank you for your help and support in getting the Great Yellow Beast up and running. To my SURF students Katie Dyl and Maryam Ali, it was a pleasure to help you get started in your scienti¯c careers; thank you for all of your help and hard work. As for the astronomy side of the group, I would like to thank Adwin Boogert, Suzanne Bisschop, and Rogier Braakman for being great backup observers on those long, long nights atop Mauna Kea, and Karin Oberg for just being a great person. I would especially like to thank Jackie Kessler-Silacci for the many long hours of pouring over equations and observational spectra and her extreme patience as I learned a new ¯eld. But I would most notably like to thank Karin, Suzanne, and Jackie for being not only great group members but also true and wonderful friends. To the JPL Spectroscopy Group, thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge about rotational spectroscopy. I would especially like to thank Brian Drouin, without whom most of the laboratory portion of this thesis would be nonexistent. Thank you for your patience and understanding as you taught me everything I know about ¯tting spectra. I owe extreme thanks to Tryggvi Emilsson for all of his help in transferring the massive collection of everything Flygare into new hands. You have not only taught me how to e®ectively rebuild and use this amazing instrument, but you have also taught me the ¯ner points of applying everyday things to scienti¯c problems. I would like to o®er a special word of thanks to the Caltech Chemistry and GPS sta®. v Dian Buchness, without you we would all be lost. To the guys in the machine shop, especially Mike Roy, I promise that I am done bringing you impossibly di±cult things to build! Thank you for being so skilled at taking my ideas and turning them into real, fully-functional pieces of equipment. To Tom Dunn, thank you for working your magic with many pieces of very old equipment and for the scavenger hunts through cabinets, closets, labs, and hallways hunting for just the right components. I owe a special thanks to Catherine May for not only keeping us all running in the BI, but also for many much-needed pep talks along the way. And thank you Leticia Calderon for keeping track of all of us (and all of our equipment) in the Blake Group. I thank all of you for your help throughout the years, as I would not have been able to complete this work without you. Thank you to the Okumura and Wennberg groups for your advice and encouragement. I have learned quite a lot about infrared spectroscopy and atmospheric chemistry at our group meetings, and I hope that you have likewise learned a bit about rotational spectroscopy and astrochemistry from me. Also, thanks to Chip Kent and Mike Feldmann from the Goddard group for the great collaboration on the two ab initio studies that are included in their theses rather than mine. Thank you to the many astronomers who have o®ered their help and advice throughout this work. This includes the CSO, OVRO, and GBT sta® and the Caltech Submillimeter group. I owe special thanks to Frank Rice and Chip Sumner for the long hours, hard work, and most importantly the incredible receiver for the survey project. I would also like to thank the hot core astronomers Sheng-Yuan Liu, Tony Remijan, Doug Friedel, Lew Snyder, and Mike Hollis for their advice and support. I owe my neverending gratitude to those teachers from my earlier schooling who inspired me to become the scientist that I am today. There are too many great professors from Illinois vi Wesleyan University to be able to name them all here, so I will simply say thank you to all of you. I would especially like to thank my undergraduate advisor, Wendy Wolbach, who taught me the skills necessary to be an excellent chemist and supported me in every choice along the way. In addition to the wonderful influence of my college professors, I would like to thank my high school chemistry teacher, Don Wayman, who ¯rst introduced me to chemistry, and most importantly to cosmochemistry. Thank you to my wonderful friends, both at Caltech and afar. To Jill Bose-Deakins, Rebecca Connor, Amanda Sisk, and Rachel Niemer, thanks for being the best bridesmaids a bride could ask for! I would also like to thank Andy Waltman, who worked so hard to leave Jeremy and me alone in so many di®erent places. In addition to Jill, Rebecca, Amanda, and Rachel, I would like to thank Brian Sisk, Andrew Udit, Jolene Fernandes, and Lauren Webb for being such a great bunch of friends. Thank you to the HUMRingers, Gary, Bryan, and the rest of my family-away-from-home at Holliston for always o®ering loving support. To all of my other close friends at Caltech who are too great in number to name, it has been a great ride, and I cannot think of a better bunch of folks to work and play with. Also, although we were not close friends, I would like to mention our friend and colleague Ben Edelson{you were an inspiration to all of us, and we will miss you greatly. I would like to especially thank my parents, Paul and Sue Widicus, for all of their love and support. You have always taught me to reach for the highest point possible, no matter how far out of reach that point might seem. You encouraged me to pursue my dreams despite the fact that it took me so far away from my family and friends. Whether it be stargazing with a new telescope on a snowy Christmas evening or memorizing the periodic table, you have always supported me in everything I have done, and I would not be who I am today without that help. Thank you, and I love you. vii Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank my husband Jeremy, who promised to love, laugh with, cry with, and grow with me. Thank you for always holding true to your word. I promise to always hold true to mine. This journey would have been so very di®erent without you by my side. I will forever be thankful that they cancelled that lunch on the ¯rst day of orientation! I am so excited about beginning the next chapter in our life together. Thank you for putting up with me while we have both been writing our theses. And thank you for being such a wonderful husband. I love you. viii Abstract It is now widely believed that prebiotic molecules were delivered to the early Earth by planetesimals and their associated interplanetary dust particles. Yet the formation pathways for these molecules are not clear. Amino acids and sugars have been found in carbonaceous chondrites, but only much simpler species have been detected in the interstellar medium (ISM). Prebiotic organics could have formed in the ISM and been directly incorporated into planetesimals, or simpler species could have formed in the ISM and then been incorporated into planetesimals, undergone further processing, and been delivered to Earth.